on some of Kate Armstrong's work

When I do anything when viewing much of Kate Armstrong's work at
http://eventfoundation.securedata.net/kate/projects.html , I find that she has made the action
meaningful, made the action into a poetically significant verb that dominates or overrides the
typical association with the action; in "Cold Chinese Salad", for instance, the action of
clicking and thereby closing the window becomes an event of sudden and unexpected energy, part
of the piece itself, rather than just the closing of a window after the piece is finished. The
action finds/discovers the human dimensions of closing a window, which we usually take for
granted as a kind of page-turning or switch flipping, like turning off the lights when you exit
a room.

All the programming in the world doesn't get much better than this, but affords opportunity to
discover/create a wider range of the human dimensions of technology/programming/science, and a
wider range of new 'media language', a wider realm of expression in this language; if the
programming does not provide such energy and human relation, if the actions are not poetically
significant verbs but instead allow the default language of functionality to blandly assert
itself and dominate the imaginative and poetical, then the loudest statement is from the machine
itself, not the artist, ie, the medium is indeed the message, in such case.

While programming does not often get any better than what she has already done, in the sense
that she has created some wonderfully magical pieces–which is, after all, a big part of the
'goal' for artists, surely–it does expand the range of possibilities dramatically. Those who
sustain invention over the longer run generally have found knowledge of programming useful in
moving forward rather than repeating themselves. There are many artists who either have given up
on web/net.art or are predictable by now, are repeating themselves.

I love Armstrong's line "Because art attracts pretenders" in her piece "Explanation". No
questions are posed explicitly in this simple yet effective piece (though they teem implicitly).
Yes, this is unfortunately the answer to too many questions–but her line also suggests a wider
meaning to the word "pretenders": art attracts people who 'pretend' in many ways, like Chrissie
Hynde and the Pretenders…or storytellers, those who are interested in pretense in a
constructively imaginative way, and this informs the line with something other than censure of
the milieu in which art operates, opens it up more broadly to a deeper consideration of the
nature of art and its milieus, so that we come to see art as attracting "pretenders" of many
types, not all necessarily insufferable but perhaps equally desperate to "pretend", though in
different ways, and with different goals.

More generally, one is struck with her writing. She's an excellent writer. We read on her site
that she has studied philosophy, which isn't surprising; she has a delicious and highly
intelligent sense of language and humour, her own voice. She retains a high and exhilarating
intellectual energy and humour in her work. We don't run across titles as good as "Delicate
Weasels" very often, which is another finely concentrated piece on her site.

The writing is spare and telling. The use of media and tech is in synch with the writing. The
verbs drive the work, and the idea of the verb extends beyond the word into the interaction and,
occassionally, the animation.

"Because elevators were all invented by the same person." Good elevators. Ding.

See also http://katearmstrong.com .

ja